Advertisement
Published: February 17th 2007
We preferred Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, although in hindsight, we only stayed in the Old Quarter in Hanoi and think that the new area was probably more like Ho Chi Minh city. The city is still packed with a zillion motorbikes that constantly use the footpath as their parking space though! ;-) It was nice to be in warmer climate too, we finally reached about 27 degrees each day. With the Tet festival being from 17-19 Feb (the Lunar new year celebrations) the city was awash with colour as all the decorations were hung and all these fantastic lights were hung all over trees, statues, temples and buildings…. was pretty spectacular, especially at night. Our hotel, the Riverside Renaissance, was in a good location beside the river and within walking distance to the Notre Dame Cathedral, several temples, small shopping malls etc so it was a really good location. We got one of our disposable cameras developed and the results were pretty disappointing (to be expected we guess!) so spent an entire day scaling the city for a new Olympus camera, same model as our stolen one. Finally found one in the same vein, probably paying a bit more
Cu Chi Tunnels
Martin firing an AK47!than we’ll find in duty free come Bangkok or Hong Kong airports, but we were desperate to start taking decent photos again!
We decided against visiting the Mekong, but did a half day tour down to Cu Chi tunnels as we hadn’t done any other organized tours in the entire country. Yes, we’re not your typical “sight-seeing tourists” ;-) Cu Chi was really interesting though, the weapons and traps were pretty freaky and I still (3 days later) have strained thigh muscles from inching through just 13m of the famous tunnels, they’re so small, you either strain your back and bend over double, not so easy with a backpack on your back, or like me, do a funny duck-waddling like action that leaves your thigh muscles burning ;-) But hey, my thighs probably needed more of a workout than my back anyway! Suffice to say, those Vietnamese soldiers who traveled kilometres of the tunnels carrying guns and the rest have my respect in terms of sheer endurance! Then Martin had a go at shooting a real AK47, and as prepared as you think you are, those things are LOUD! Martin’s ears were ringing for the next hour! Then of
Cu Chi Tunnels
Kristi IN just one of the holes caused by a B52 Bomb - massive! course there was the film screening all about the Vietnam war, which was little more than “government issued propaganda” and as bad and horrible as the whole war was, and despite the fact that everything in the video was I’m sure completely true, the wording and way it was done left most of our tour group struggling their hardest not to laugh. Things like “the Americans came and shot pots and pans, chickens and ducks, carrots and vegetables” ?!?!?! and all about the “American killing” awards, no joke, that was the official award title giving to the heroes!
It was good to leave for Cambodia though, as fun as Vietnam had been, it just didn’t tug at us like Thailand, Bali or Malaysia, etc. The people are not as warm and friendly as you’ll experience elsewhere and this contributes a lot to it, the Vietnamese tend to still be very suspicious and slightly hostile to foreigners, and for this I don’t think we can really blame them.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0592s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
